Jodie’s new smash hit: showgirl Jodie Prenger on why she was born to play Shirley Valentine

I’d Do Anything winner and West End star JODIE PRENGER’s new show has her portraying a bored, frustrated woman who transforms her life by taking a chance. She tells Louise Gannon why she was born to play the role of Shirley Valentine

There are few performers more perfect for the role of Shirley Valentine than the West End star Jodie Prenger. Northern and blunt as a shovel, with a quick wit honed over years of dealing with hecklers, Jodie – like Shirley – is a woman whose life was transformed by taking a chance.

In 2008, after auditioning for BBC One’s I’d Do Anything – a search to find a young actress to play Nancy (and three boys to play the title role) in a West End production of Oliver! – Jodie got the part thanks to winning the viewers’ vote, despite judges Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh reportedly having reservations because they both felt she was too fat.

Nearly nine years on, Jodie, 37 – a size 16 and proud of every curve – has never stopped working, with shows from Spamalot to Les Misérables and television roles in Hustle and Waterloo Road. But to star in the one-woman show, written by the renowned playwright Willy Russell, was a part Jodie knew she had to secure.

‘People think of Shirley Valentine as a play about a holiday romance,’ she says. ‘But it’s actually the story of a woman who was stuck in a rut and who dared to go out to find herself. I relate to that; it is my story. I was on the point of giving up entirely before I’d Do Anything, and I now have a life and a career I never dreamed of. I’ve also had a bellyful of bad romances so I’m a woman who has lived and learned – exactly like Shirley.’

The critically acclaimed play (which was made into a Bafta-winning film in 1989) revolves around a Northern housewife (Pauline Collins in the movie) who, fed up with being taken for granted by her husband Joe, is so bored, lonely and frustrated that she talks to her kitchen wall. When a friend invites her on a trip to Greece, she leaves a note for Joe and takes off. After her friend ditches her for a man, Shirley begins an affair with a waiter but, when she sees him with another woman, admits she hasn’t fallen in love with him – she has fallen in love with life.

DRESS, Episode at House of Fraser. JEWELLERY, Butler & Wilson

She makes a new start for herself on the island and eventually Joe comes to find her to try to win her back. This latest revival is to mark the play’s 30th anniversary. Willy said of Jodie: ‘I knew in an instant that here was a formidable actress, one who possessed the grit and warmth, the drive and the vulnerability, the energy and the heart to make Shirley live again.’

But you have to wonder whether the story will resonate with women today. ‘One hundred per cent,’ she says. ‘This is about breaking out and living life, which has never been more important than now when people are living through social media. You see people out with their friends filming everything rather than being in the moment. This is about enjoying real life, connecting with what makes you happy, not worrying about what you should look like. But you have to make the decision to go for it.’

We are sitting in an egg-chips-and-beans café in North London. Jodie is looking dazzling in fake eyelashes and full make-up, her fingers covered in gobstopper-sized stones (‘diamonds and dogs are my favourite things in the world’).

‘Shy’ is not in the Prenger vocabulary. From the moment she arrives I am blasted with her own particular brand of charm. She is old-school; she believes in hard graft and glamour, taking knocks and getting back up again, and following your dreams. ‘I was never the girl everybody thought would be a star,’ she says. ‘As a teenager I was ugly and fat with huge glasses and a bad perm. I looked like a cross between Deirdre Barlow and Russell Grant.

‘I went to an all-girl school where it was the pretty ones who were popular. I didn’t fit in. My way of dealing with it was to be the joker, to make everyone laugh, to laugh about the way I looked before anyone else did. But I knew I wanted to be someone; I wanted to perform, and I just kept on going. People probably thought I was mad, that it was never going to happen to a girl like me. When I started doing the working men’s clubs circuit I thought I was a success if I got off stage without someone throwing a sandwich in my face.’

The 1989 film adaptation of Shirley Valentine with Pauline Collins, left, and, right, the poster for Shirley Valentine starring Jodie

Jodie – who has a 30-year-old brother, Marko, a tattoo artist – was born in Blackpool. Her parents Madeleine and Marty ran a hotel, and one of Jodie’s earliest memories is her grandmother entertaining guests by miming along to Shirley Bassey. ‘There was a buzz in Blackpool because of the performers who went there. I was completely obsessed. My uncle knew Danny La Rue; my nan told me he had mink-covered toilet seats. I loved the drag queens you’d see performing and I was into all the old-time movie stars such as Doris Day and Judy Garland. I wanted to be like them.’

As a teenager Jodie was driven to venues by her father. ‘Working men’s clubs were the toughest start you could have. I remember performing in one in Manchester when I was about 17. There were these really hard women sitting at the back. I got on stage and said: “Does anyone like musicals?” They shouted: “We don’t!” I gulped and sang “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”. There was no applause.’

Despite setbacks (including winning a leg of lamb at meat bingo prior to one show, which upped hostility in the club), by the age of 23 Jodie was the warm-up act for the likes of Ken Dodd and Joe Pasquale, as well as performing on cruises and in gay bars.

She was also a size 22 and weighed 18 stone. Jodie has talked many times about her weight. In the past decade she has fluctuated from a size 26 to a ten and is now settled at a 16. It is often said that size really does matter in showbusiness; in other words, fat girls don’t get famous. ‘I remember thinking my size was the thing that was really stopping me,’ says Jodie. ‘I’d got to a certain level and couldn’t push past it.’

In 2006, she applied to go on the TV show The Biggest Loser and won by losing nearly eight and a half stone and slimming into a size ten. In retrospect, she accepts that she thought this was going to change her life. But it didn’t. ‘I’d become completely obsessed with weight loss. Size ten clothes were actually baggy on me. People thought it was amazing but I didn’t feel like myself.’

After returning to singing in cabaret and gay bars, she decided she would give up trying to succeed as a performer. The weight gradually slipped back on, but Jodie kept up an exercise regime and controlled her eating. ‘I didn’t want to be as thin as I’d become, but I wanted to be healthy. I wanted to be able to dance. I still exercise when I can and some shows such as Calamity Jane keep you fit with the dancing. I love food but I try to be sensible,’ she says. ‘I watch myself and if I feel I need to cut back on portions I do.’

Two years on from winning The Biggest Loser, and with her career having failed to ignite, Jodie says, ‘I’d got to the end of thinking something would change. I was in a rut – just like Shirley. I didn’t have to talk to a wall; I had my family and my friends. I felt I’d hit a wall more than anything.’

It was Jodie’s mother who heard about auditions for I’d Do Anything, with judges including John Barrowman, Denise Van Outen and Barry Humphries. ‘It was going to be my last hurrah,’ Jodie says. ‘I was going to give it my all and if it came to nothing then that would be it.’ The move paid off – the public fell in love with her. She went on to win rave reviews as Nancy and hasn’t stopped working since. Jodie still counts Andrew and Cameron as friends. ‘I’d always rather people say what they thought. They are lovely and have been really supportive to me. I owe them both a lot. My aim on that show was to be who I really am and I think the public take people for who they are.

‘Walking out on stage at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on the first night of Oliver! with Rowan Atkinson [who played Fagin] was my Shirley Valentine moment. I became the person I wanted to be; I was living the life I wanted.’

Jodie playing Nancy in Oliver!

When Jodie plays Shirley, there will be no one else to walk out on stage with: it’s a one-woman show, told in a series of humorous anecdotes. Surely following in Pauline Collins’s footsteps must be a terrifying prospect? Jodie shakes her head: ‘Tell Me On a Sunday was a one-woman show [she toured with the production last year] and the idea of doing that was scary, but I loved it. There’s an intimacy you get from the audience, which is just incredible.’

Jodie often gets letters from girls who say they feel too fat for a career in showbusiness. She shakes her head. ‘It bothers me that girls think they have to be a certain way. I don’t wish to be a size 22 ever again – or a size ten either. I want to be healthy, but I want to be me. I tell these girls this is not the pop industry; the theatre has roles for women of different ages, shapes and sizes. It’s about work and talent. You have to put on your own make-up, do ten-hour rehearsals and back-to-back shows, but it’s warm and real, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

In Shirley Valentine, her affair with the waiter turns out not to be a Mills & Boon romance, and Shirley realises that only she can make herself happy. ‘I think it’s absolutely true that happiness has to come from within yourself rather than a relationship,’ says Jodie. ‘I never found myself because of a man or by losing weight. I found myself when I achieved the success I’d always wanted. I’m glad I had to graft so hard because I appreciated it so much when I finally got there.’

After taking part in the hit BBC show, Jodie became the subject of two kiss-and-tells by former boyfriends, including her ex-fiancé Steve Greengrass, who proposed to her during I’d Do Anything (their relationship ended soon after the show did). It was only then that Jodie realised the sort of men they were. ‘To say I’ve kissed a few toads is unfair to toads,’ she says. ‘It was horrible to have a man say dreadful stuff about me in a newspaper. At the time I wanted to shout from the rooftops that half the things I was supposed to have got up to I’d never done. But that’s just giving it all oxygen. My advice is once you find out a person is a rotten apple, walk away and don’t look back. I’ve learnt the hard way.’

Jodie is not, however, a tough cookie – which is made evident when she talks about the other great love of her life: animals. She has chickens, four dogs – a Romanian street dog, Jim, and yorkies Gizmo, Hogan and Hudson – two parrots, a rabbit and a hermit crab she rescued from a pet shop where it was kept in a tiny cage. ‘When I’m rich I’m going to hire a private jet, fly to the Caribbean and set it free on a beach,’ she says.

Apart from her dogs, most of Jodie’s animals are kept at her mum’s, but when she retires she plans to open a rescue home. ‘I can’t bear to see any animal being ill-treated,’ she says. ‘It makes me want to weep.’ Jim came into her life when she went to get a rabbit from a rescue centre. ‘I saw this emaciated little dog in a cage with a notice on the door that said: “I’m Jim. I soil in the house and I hate men.” I took him straight home. He has no teeth and a gammy leg but he’s the best judge of character I’ve ever met. He hated both my exes on sight. I should have taken more notice of him.’

JUST FOR JODIE

LAST BOOK YOU READ Patti LuPone: A Memoir. I love her.

SECRET CRUSH Gerard Butler. I met him once and he told me he started off in Oliver!.

ON YOUR IPOD Salsa Celtica, Doris Day, Judy Garland, jazz.

MUST-HAVE ACCESSORY Diamonds.

MOST TREASURED POSSESSION My dogs.

FAVOURITE BEAUTY PRODUCT Anything by Charlotte Tilbury or By Terry, and Touche Eclat.

TRAVEL ESSENTIALS An empty suitcase for shopping and a comfy pair of harem pants.

WARDROBE STAPLE Black shirt dresses.

CAN’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT… A kiss from my fella.

SECRET AMBITION To set up an animal sanctuary.

MOTTO ‘Live every day’ and, ‘If it’s not for sale don’t put it in the shop window.’

WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? I’ve been in Dubai for the past month so it’s been eggs royale and masala omelettes. I dream about the breakfasts there.

PARTY TRICK The splits.

Jim does, however, adore Jodie’s fiancé Simon Booth, who runs a car leasing company. The couple met in 2010 and became engaged in 2012. It turned out to be the best of times and worst of times, because a few weeks later Jodie’s father died of kidney cancer. Her dad was thrilled when she got engaged to Simon and told her he was the man who would ‘keep her safe’. Five years on, she and Simon have yet to set a date. ‘Losing my dad knocked me,’ Jodie says.

‘I don’t think I have ever felt grief like it. It came in waves and I went through every range of emotions possible, and months later, birthdays had passed, big events, Christmas, and I still hadn’t come to terms with it. I loved my dad and he loved me. It’s the love I get from my family that has underpinned everything in my life.’ Jodie says that for several years after his death she felt she couldn’t set a wedding date without her father to walk her down the aisle.

‘My excuse now is that there never seems to be time to plan anything between shows.’ They have recently bought a house together in Lancashire, near to Jodie’s mother. ‘Simon did everything for the move. When I was in Dubai [performing in Les Misérables] he came out at weekends to stay with me. He looks after me, runs me baths, makes me laugh. I love him beyond life.’

You have to wonder whether it is actually Simon who, like Shirley, may feel he’s being taken for granted. Jodie laughs and pulls a face. ‘That’s a good point. I’m going to be looking out for a ticket to a Greek island on the kitchen table. But he knows how much he means to me. I couldn’t do what I do without him and we will get married. There could never be anyone but him for me.’